Supreme Court: Can`t Exclude Jurors For Race

April 2, 1991|Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday expanded protections against discrimination in the selection of criminal juries, ruling that the Constitution bars prosecutors from excluding jurors based on their race, even if the defendant belongs to a different racial group.

Voting 7-2, the justices ordered a new hearing for Larry Joe Powers, a white Ohio man who had appealed his murder conviction because seven of the 10 potential jurors the prosecution dismissed at his trial without a stated reason were black. Powers was sentenced to 53 years to life in prison for killing two men in 1985.

In 1986, the court ruled that prosecutors violate the Constitution`s guarantee of equal protection under the law when they excuse potential jurors for racial reasons. However, that case -- Batson vs. Kentucky -- involved a black defendant and black potential jurors. The court did not make clear until Monday that the principle announced in Batson extends to other racial combinations.

Writing for the court in Powers vs. Ohio, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the 14th Amendment bars any racial bias in jury selection, regardless of whether the defendant and potential jurors belong to the same race.

``Although a defendant has no right to a jury composed in whole or in part of persons of the defendant`s own race, he or she does have the right to be tried by a jury whose members are selected by non-discriminatory criteria,`` Kennedy wrote.

Racial discrimination in jury selection, he said, casts doubt on the integrity of the process and on the fairness of the trial.

``The purpose of the jury system is to impress upon the criminal defendant and the community as a whole that a verdict of conviction or acquittal is given in accordance with the law by persons who are fair,`` Kennedy wrote. ``The verdict will not be accepted or understood in these terms if the jury is chosen by unlawful means at the outset.``

The ruling deals with the way prosecutors use peremptory challenges, which allow both sides in a criminal trial to dismiss potential jurors without giving an explanation. Batson set up a procedure by which a defendant may seek a special hearing by the trial judge when a prosecutor strikes several jurors of the same race.

In Monday`s ruling, the justices said such racial bias jeopardized not only the defendant`s right to equal protection but also the right of potential jurors to be free from illegal discrimination.

``Active discrimination by a prosecutor during this process condones violations of the United States Constitution within the very institution entrusted with its enforcement,`` Kennedy wrote. Barring a white defendant`s challenge to the exclusion of black jurors would ``condone the arbitrary exclusion of citizens from the duty, honor and privilege of jury service,`` he said.

Voting with Kennedy on Monday were Justices Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O`Connor and David Souter.

Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist dissented, calling the ruling in Powers vs. Ohio ``a clear departure`` from prior law. In a dissenting opinion, Scalia said the court essentially abolished the use of peremptory challenges and threatened the release of ``unquestionably guilty`` criminals.

COURT RULINGS

In other action on Monday, the Supreme Court:

-- Gave communities broad new immunity against being sued when they award local monopolies to private businesses. The 6-3 decision threw out a $3 million antitrust award that Columbia, S.C., had been ordered to pay.

-- Agreed to decide how much authority the federal government has to prevent illegal immigrants facing deportation from working.

-- Agreed to decide in a Louisiana case whether people acquitted of crimes because they were insane may, after regaining sanity, be denied release from mental hospitals if deemed still dangerous.

-- Let stand the convictions of four men whose appeals raised issues related to the use of illegally coerced confessions, which the court last week ruled could be used as evidence in some criminal cases. The justices refused to hear arguments that in each of the four cases lower courts wrongly applied a ``harmless error`` test to asserted violations of the defendant`s constitutional rights.

-- Agreed to settle a dispute between the federal government and Alaska over submerged offshore land that may have gold deposits.

-- Turned down an appeal by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Secord, a key figure in the Iran-Contra affair, aimed at overturning a drunken-driving conviction. The court rejected arguments that Secord`s rights were violated.

-- Agreed to review, in a dispute between Arkansas and Oklahoma, the federal government`s power to permit dumping of treated sewage into interstate waterways.